In the directions of the 91xg i noticed they had the metallic side of the director elements faced towards the reflectors(this is the way i have them). In this pdf instructions http://www.solidsignal.com/manuals/91XG_Instructions.pdf i noticed that in this it mentions you might get better reception with the metallic side(director elements) facing towards the tranmitters.

Has anyone in here with a 91xg tried both ways and which worked the best or does it make a difference? I have two of these stacked and up on a tower but have not run any coax to them yet or tested them. I do not mind changing the elements. Thanks for any information.

In the pic, the scanner antenna is going to be moved way down the tower and also a Wade Delhi vhf added.

better reception with the metallic side(director elements) facing towards the tranmitters

Don't you think the above statement makes sense???

full metal side towards the front...plastic side facing to the rear.

you will need to take the antennas down and reassemble. I would not hesitate and get 2nd. opinions. just do it!

i noticed that in this it mentions you might get better reception with the metallic side(director elements) facing towards the tranmitters.


I wonder why they say performance MAY be improved by facing the metallic side of the director elements towards the transmitters.

Does that mean under certain conditions or channels it may or may not work better or what?

I'm not saying it would or wouldn't it's just interesting the way it's worded and what the reason is why they say "may be improved" and not "will be improved".

I have a call into Antennas Direct to see what they say and it does seem the more mettalic metal side to the transmitters, would be best. Here is a picture of mine up close before we put it on tower.

Your elements are installed properly (in the picture) with the metal side facing forward and the plastic frame on the back!

Thanks, i am going to get the rotor plate, rotor and all up maybe this weekend, push mast pipe up and get coax and preamp up and try it out.

mclapp, i called antennas direct and he did not go into detail but i wondered like you but he said the way i have them or the more metal towards the transmitter is what he recommends and the plastic back towards the reflector. It only stands to reason like Rick mentioned.

As far as improvements, i feel and this is just my opinion, when feb deadline gets here and the new band plan goes to channel 50. Not way up in the 60's and this antennas gain is really good up at 50 and above, i feel they will make the one active driven element, longer. I think in return, they will try to cut out above 50 and where gain drops above 50 and make the gain high thru out the uhf band, down lower also. I think by wanting a smaller bandwidth and more gain between 14 and 50 instead of 14 thru 69 maybe the antenna can be made the same but the back active element made longer. Widen the band width, make shorter and going down and cutting out from 69 down to 50, that element longer. Just that one element.

I would never mess with mine or i don't think we should but instead of a new antenna design after feb, i don't think they would but i do feel they will make the one active element longer. Then after the fact if this was better, everyone with 91xg's could probably modify there 91xg's pretty easy.

Other things to better performance, a friend wants to build a cubical quad for uhf tv but the bandwidth is not real wide on quads. They have alot of gain but maybewould have alot of fall off going from one end of band to the other. They are high gain, light and easy to stack. In the spring, i want to try 4 of these stacked horizontal and friend wants us to comapre this to us making one long boom(strong) and not this flimsy stuff they send us. Making it one long piece, drilling holes and making the 91xg twice the length it is now, with strong boom, twice the elements it has now and stacking two of these together horizontal and see how it would compare to 4 stacked horizontal.

I'll let you know soon how two does for me. Thanks for all the great info and help in here. Great forum. If you notice in the pic attached, i had someone make me a 4 way stripline combiner for up to channel 50 and around 700mhz and down to channel 2 low vhf 55mhz. Notice that two f connectors are dummy loaded and capped off. I just did not have enough time to stack 4 before winter and that is my plan in spring, so i went ahead and got a 4 way combiner. It will probably have more loss than a 2 way but i wanted to try 4 soon. The other f connector is below and i'll put coax seal or rubber boots on all them.

I'll keep the forum posted on anything i do find out or experience but so far it seems stacking horizontal with 4 antennas seems to be best and higher gain.

I was thinking it may change the director spacing more than the fact that the metal was facing towards the transmitter. The signal has to travel through the plactic one way or the other anyway since each director is in front of the next.

A 4 stack should be quite a sight be sure to keep track of your impedance match, as you add antennas the overall impedance will divide and the impedance will start to get really low and create a fairly large mismatch.

I built a quagi once, quad reflector and driven elements with yagi directors it worked pretty good but as you said the bandwidth is narrow and just like anything else if you tune it for a wider bandwidth you lose gain.

Have fun, keep us posted on how it all works out.

mclapp, did you do the cubical quad for uhf tv and could you tell me how it worked comparred to other antennas?

mclapp, did you do the cubical quad for uhf tv and could you tell me how it worked comparred to other antennas?

No, it was for 144mhz 2 meter ham band and that band is only a few mhz wide. The gain is good but the band width is too narrow to be real effective for anything but a few channels on TV. I thought about building one for single TV channel but decided against it especially for UHF. If you are off just a little on a measurment you could be off a mile and would need some really good equipment or alot of cut and try to tune it properly.

The biggest problem is that the input impedence of a multi element quad is low, around 50 ohms and as you go away from resonance it can change 25-100 ohms in a hurry which makes the mis-match go bad fast.

With Yagis you can use a folded dipole driven element to bring the impedence up and bowtie style elements have a naturally high impedence out of the box so with those a 25 - 100 ohm swing isn't as harmful.

I wondered about this and now i see why a cubical quad wouldn't be to good for uhf tv. Besides bandwidth, even matching is harder. That is why we see yagi and bowtie styles so much more. Looks like it is hard to beat what we have and then for more gain, to stack what we have.